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Well i'm stoked as i can't wait until it arrives to Mercury and of course it being so close to the sun since i'm a practicing ancient Roman pagan sun worshiper just adds to the nostalgia of the mission
ROFL...I love it...THANK GOD....the POC regulars would never set foot in a scientific and technical forum....they'd have a tin foil hat field day with this.. I'm excited too.....March 17 will be the first day of orbit......
ROFL...I love it...THANK GOD....the POC regulars would never set foot in a scientific and technical forum....they'd have a tin foil hat field day with this.. I'm excited too.....March 17 will be the first day of orbit......
Hey that date march 17 is close to the spring equinox march 20 as we ancient roman pagans who worship the sun love that date
Anyway cool thread here PITTS and i can't wait to see what Messenger tells us about Mercury's hidden secrets .
I did not think about the Equinox......look out the conspiracy and doom/gloom people, with little Scientific knowledge/education, will have a field day with that.
Thanx 6 Foot......I try to compose good threads and I can't wait myself...the video resolution will increase by at least a factor of ten. I'll keep everyone posted with updates as the data comes in and is released to the public..
I saw Mercury and Jupiter together on the horizon just after sunset today. They were forming a line almost parallel to the horizon tonight. Tomorrow, Mercury will be above Jupiter, I think.
Hooray for Messenger, but really, meh, IMO. Mercury is about as interesting as Pluto. While I did work on the New Horizons mission, I don't really get why we're wasting money sending what is essentially a Polaroid on a stack of RTG's out to a planetoid or KBO (take your pick) that we're probably never going to bother with. Why not save our pennies and fund JIMO or another flagship mission like Cassini which might give us data we'll actually USE in the next 200 years?
Why bother sending probes to places we have no intention of going to gather data that we have no intention of using? Better to hunt for useful resources on the nearby celestial bodies or in the Jovian system that could make a difference to human exploration and development of space in the next few centuries.
I saw Mercury and Jupiter together on the horizon just after sunset today. They were forming a line almost parallel to the horizon tonight. Tomorrow, Mercury will be above Jupiter, I think.
Hooray for Messenger, but really, meh, IMO. Mercury is about as interesting as Pluto. While I did work on the New Horizons mission, I don't really get why we're wasting money sending what is essentially a Polaroid on a stack of RTG's out to a planetoid or KBO (take your pick) that we're probably never going to bother with. Why not save our pennies and fund JIMO or another flagship mission like Cassini which might give us data we'll actually USE in the next 200 years?
Why bother sending probes to places we have no intention of going to gather data that we have no intention of using? Better to hunt for useful resources on the nearby celestial bodies or in the Jovian system that could make a difference to human exploration and development of space in the next few centuries.
I am glad you saw Mercury....a better view is coming shortly. I disagree....every Planet etcetera is interesting.....and since Mercury is so close to our Sun we certainly can will be able to extrapolate new information. The high resolution photographs will noe be available until MESSENGER achieves a stable orbit around Mercury.
That said I fully support the future Jupiter/Saturn missions>>>>>
Europa Jupiter System Mission Finalist for Next Joint European/NASA Space Probe - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110207/us_ac/7803686_europa_jupiter_system_mission_finalist_for _next_joint_europeannasa_space_probe - broken link)
Thanx for the link! It seems there are quite a few mysteries surrounding Mercury's magnetic field; it's "engine" and why the field is so dynamic....information that should help us unravel the mysteries still surrounding the Earth's magnetic "shield", without which all higher lifeforms would be pretty much obliterated.
First photograph of Mercury from an orbiting spacecraft. The image was taken March 29th at 5:20 AM EDT. The large crater.....upper center of picture is called Debussy. MESSENGER successfully achieved orbit around Mercury on March 17th, 2011.
I dunno I can't get too excited about Mercury. A bigger, hotter moon. Lifeless, no atmosphere, little if any geologic activity. There are more interesting places to go: Europa, Titan, Io where there are a lot more complex processes going on.
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and of course it being so close to the sun since i'm a practicing ancient Roman pagan sun worshiper just adds to the nostalgia of the mission 
. I'm excited too.....March 17 will be the first day of orbit......
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